


A Demon in the Stacks

by Opaque_Mistake



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Book Fetish, Books, M/M, bookstore, ineffable husbands, literary Easter egg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opaque_Mistake/pseuds/Opaque_Mistake
Summary: In which Aziraphele realizes it was a mistake to leave Crowley unsupervised in his shop.





	1. Chapter 1

Crowley sunk into an overstuffed armchair in his dear friend’s shop. He sprawled his legs, slumped and opened the book on his lap, carefully arranging himself as if he had been reading all the while. Hurriedly, he took a swig out of the glass of port, just to make the image convincing. He had been here all the while, innocently reading, innocently sipping at his wine. 

“Oh no, no, no…” Aziraphele murmured sadly as he saw a client out the door. “If only I had a lead on that one…. tis a pity, I would travel to the end of Africa if I had to, just to get my hands on even a 14th century copy. It was so nice to see you Mr. Singh, please send my love to the missus.”

He made his way slowly through the shop, stopping here and there to adjust the alignment of the books on the shelves, putting away a second edition of Winnie the Pooh that a dear lady had been by to look at earlier. “Curator of Children’s Literature” he murmured to himself, marveling at the delightful careers that humans had found fit to assign themselves. A spider had started to spin a web over near a rare full set of American folkways manuals, and Aziraphele gently relocated it out the window before joining his friend.

As he reached for his port, he distinctly saw Crowley lick his finger to wet it and then turn the page.

“You mustn't do that,” Aziraphele fussed, trying to get a better look at what Crowley had been reading, “with a book that age, you mustn't wet the corners at all, you’ll damage it.”

The dark glasses turned their attention to him, “I mustn't what?”

“Lick your fingers to turn the pages like that, you just can’t… the paper is too delicate. Especially with a book like that, it’s far too old to be handled without gloves.” Aziraphele felt a cold chill go up his neck when he saw that Crowley’s finger had darkened. “Wait now… what are you reading?”

Crowley turned the book around, “Oh this? Aristotle’s Poetics. Dead boring really.” He set it aside on the end table.

Aziraphele’s voice turned steely. “Aristotle’s Second Poetics, I suppose? Have you been snooping around in my books?”

“It’s a bookshop, old friend,” Crowley’s voice was relaxed. Almost confident, but not quite. “I was just, poking around in the stacks, so to speak and it caught my attention.”

“It. Did. Not. Just. Catch. Your. Attention.” Aziraphele knew full well that Aristotle’s Second Poetics was most certainly not stored out in the open with the rest of the books. Especially that the earliest edition with the peeling leather cover. “You have been sticking your nose in where you shouldn’t!”

“Just books, Mate,” Crowley toss off dismissively, “Aristotle’s been around for centuries, don’t see why you’re fussed.”

“That book is stored in restricted bookshelves, and for a good reason too. Look at your finger. If you were a human, you’d be dead within the hour.”

“Just a bit of ink, nothing to worry about”

Aziraphele had had enough, “It is NOT just a bit of ink. That’s poison. Enough to kill a grown human man. For heaven’s sakes Crowley, you think every book in here is as innocent as an angel? That one is stored in the restricted bookshelves behind lock and key for a reason. And that you have it…” he blustered around for the right words, “well you should not have it, and why have you been breaking into my things?”

Crowley’s hand came to rest on a stack of books next to him on the end table. “I’ve not been breaking into your…”

The stack of books. Aziraphele could tell at a glance they were all quite rare. An early Meiji era illustrated manuscript of the Tale of Genji, still in court verse. A volume containing the earliest publication of one of Sappho’s fragments from the Medieval period. A first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A slim pamphlet of the collected aphorisms of William of Baskerville.

“You have! You have been messing with my books. Those all have places, they don’t just sit out on a table where you might spill port on them. They belong….” He gestured weakly around the bookstore “…. They belong, all over…. Have you been just pulling books willy-nilly?”

Aziraphele could practically see Crowley’s reptile eyes rolling behind the darkened lenses. “Willy-nilly?”

“YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN” Aziraphele bellowed angrily “those books are rare and precious, and they belong where I put them! In! Their! Places!” 

He couldn’t remember ever being this upset with Crowley. His bookstore was less an actual place to purchase books, and more of a private monument to human literacy. To their deep history of being wrong, being right, feeling deeply and passionately, arguing over matters both serious and silly. All there, written out in pigment on sheets of cellulose, bound in leather, in linen, in cardboard. Thousands of years of humans being ridiculously, preciously fallible. And so carefully preserved. So carefully organized. But the demon had just…

“Get out,” Aziraphele growled in a voice that didn’t even feel like his own. It felt like fire. It felt like brimstone. “Get out now before I…. Heaven help me… Before I….”

Crowley started, shocked by the change in his old friend. “But I just…”

“GET THE HELL OUT….” Aziraphele yelled, with an anger that scared them both. “… AND NEVER COME BACK, YOU ARE BANNED FROM MY SHOP FOR…”

Crowley scuttled out of his chair and across the building, ducking behind a pile of magazines. He was not a man who was easily spooked, but in 6000 years he had never heard….

“BANNED FROM MY SHOP FOR LIFE!”

The demon scuttled out the front door, slamming it behind him. 

Aziraphele followed him to the entry and locked the door from the inside. Slowly, he slid to the floor, his back leaning against the door, just in case the demon might try to push his way back in full of idiotic excuses. A tear slid down his cheek as he looked at all his precious books in despair.

“What did he do? What did he get into? Does he even know what he’s done?”


	2. An angel forgives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley bribes his way back into the bookshop.

Demons are rubbish at apologizing. Crowley had spent weeks trying to sort it out. 

He’d waited at their old spot in St. James’ park, his angel hadn’t shown.

He’d followed Aziraphale on the street, but the idea of accosting him in a busy crowd was humiliating.

There was even that agonizing night when he’d waited outside the shop until closing time, gripping a floral bouquet. Which he had magicked into a potted plant, because he still didn’t understand why humans thought giving each other dead things was romantic. But as he watched Aziraphale escort the last customer out of the shop, he couldn’t work up the courage to step out of the shadows and ask to have a talk. He magicked the philodendron back into wilting roses, dumped them in a bin and skulked home.

No, he needed a hook, a trick, something to draw the angel in, crack his shell just enough for Crowley to talk his way back into his good graces. 

* * *

It was a sunny afternoon when Crowley next approached the shop. He peered through the windows and waited until Aziraphale had seen out a mother and daughter pair who walked out clutching a very old looking book indeed, “Father will be so pleased.” The girl said as she brushed by Crowley in the street.

There were a few more people browsing in the shop when he stepped in, but Aziraphale paid them no mind as he bustled about, carefully replacing several books that had been scattered around. But he looked up just before Crowley touched the doorknob , as if he could sense the demon on his threshold. 

“I thought I banned you from my shop.” Aziraphale’s eyes flashed in irritation. 

“I'm here with a peace offering.” Crowley held out a squarish object, wrapped in kraft paper, suspiciously the size of a rather hefty book.

“What is that? Some cheesy coffee-table book from an art museum gift shop?” Aziraphale knew the demon was not exactly bookish, “The collected works of Stephen King? Hmph… you underestimate how cheaply you can buy back my affections Crowley.”

“Oh well… I can always pop round the corner and sell it to Peter Harrington’s if you don’t want to have a look. It’s just that last time you made a point of saying… what was it? ‘Do you think every book in here is as innocent as an angel?.’ Over the years, I’d always thought you wouldn’t want this one. Not really one for your side.”

He could see the light of interest spark in Aziraphale’s eyes, even as the angel kept his voice even.

“My side? Well, I’d have thought you’d known by now Crowley, that this shop is full of books that are not quite heavenly. Let me take a look at it… I mean, if you promise, really promise not to touch anything. I’ll be very cross if you go shuffling my books again. It took a solid week to put everything to rights again. Is it quite old?” Aziraphale reached tentatively for his white cotton gloves.

Straightfaced, Crowley nodded. “Oh, yes. Quite.”

The spark of interest spread across Aziraphale’s face until he was grinning in anticipation. Slowly he unwrapped the kraft paper.

“It's just, not the kind of thing I could hand off to just anyone to care for.”

The book was clearly old, with a cracking reddish brown leather cover, faded along the spine. It was of an age where the spine was largely unmarked, and the whole of the thing looked to be hand-inked vellum. 

“Crowley, what is this? It’s terribly old, you can’t tell me you’ve had this all these years?”

The demon made a non-commital sound meant to be heard as a yes. In reality it had been entrusted to a Castilian family centuries ago. Their great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren couldn’t be bothered to look crack it open, but miraculously they had stashed it away where it hadn’t been damaged.

“I believe it is known in translation as the Picatrix. Not so much a book of prophecy as…”

“A grimoire!” Aziraphale gasped. “But this one, this one is not a grimoire, I could feel if it was.” He very carefully eased the book open. “It’s the original early Arabic, my heavens it’s ancient Crowley. And beautiful.”

“You say it’s not really a grimoire though? Why not?”

“Well, a grimoire is not about the contents of the book so much as the intent of the writer, or scribe in this case. At the time this one was written, the moorish author would not have been describing dark magic per se, but just trying to make sense of the world around him. Most human magic starts off as such. Simple observation, a few peculiar assumptions, a five generations down the road they’re calling up Dagon, Lord of the Flies because the girl down the road fancies another boy.“

“Plus,” Aziraphale wiggled his gloved hand in Crowley’s face “thin cotton gloves, if this book was consecrated to evil they would protect me about as well as the soles of your shoes do on holy ground.”

“So you like it?” Crowley arched an eyebrow over his dark glasses, “Because I can always take it round the corner, they’d probably offer me a soul in exchange.”

Aziraphale’s face fell. “You _are_ trying to bribe me, aren’t you?”

Crowley looked around to make sure no one else in the shop was paying them any attention, and leaned in so close that he could smell musky traces of old fashioned cologne, “I missed you,” he whispered in Aziraphale’s ear, and saw a prickle of shivers down the angel’s neck.

“I missed you too,” his voice was soft and sad, “But Crowley, this business, these books, old friends that they are, they’re my passion. And I need you to show respect for that, or you might as well leave now. I didn’t leave heaven for your sake, I left it for my own.”

“Is this still about me rearranging your books?”

Aziraphale frowned, “Yes, of course it is. But most especially it’s about rearranging the books that are between the books that the humans can see. The secret books, I know they’re there, but I didn’t know you did. You must leave them alone, they’re stored like that for a reason.”

Crowley lowered his glasses to look his angel straight in the eye, “Let me stay for a drink tonight and I swear I’ll never move a single book again.”

“Oh, alright…” Aziraphale smile regretfully, “I never understand why I take a demon at his word, but I’ve got a nice cask aged single malt, and it would be a pity to drink alone.”


	3. Postscript

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To be fair, I only wrote chapter 2 so that I could write this.... please indulge me for a moment.

Aziraphale moved quietly through the shop, setting things right. The front door had been locked hours ago, but he hadn’t bothered to put the shop in order because Crowley had come by at closing with a particularly rare bourbon. They’d both been off on a merry bender ever since. Now the demon slept, sprawled out in an armchair and snoring terribly. 

There wasn’t much to put away, antiquarian booksellers didn’t get much business on a random Thursday in midwinter. But still, it always felt right to walk through the shop, putting up the things on his desk, shelving a greek lexicon he’d been consulting, closing the glass dust cases over the rarest and oldest books. He frowned at the muddy bootsteps in the entry way, left by his one customer of the day; he could go to all the work of getting out the mop… or. He looked furtively around to make sure no one was looking, and miracled all the dirt back outside where it belonged. 

He was just turning off the last of the lights when he saw it. A second edition of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan shelved in between Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. At least the demon was being thematically consistent.

Crowley had kept to his word for a couple of years, pointedly refraining from even touching a single book in the shop. And his pranks were subtle at first, so subtle that Aziraphale had thought it was just careless customers. But eventually he settled into a pattern.

The Chronicles of Narnia shelved between The Return of the King and the Simarillion.

Stephen King’s IT moved from the horror section to join a thick art book of historical circus posters and collection of programs from the earliest days of Cirque du Soleil.

Edward Said’s Orientalism very pointedly shelved next T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

The devil was in the details.

Aziraphale glanced over to see that the demon was still solidly snoring before putting the boy who never grew up back into his proper place among the Edwardian early editions. Crowley had never touched the hidden books again, but he seemed to take perverse pleasure in moving just one book every time he visited now. The angel never said a thing.

The only punishment worse than a row, he thought smugly to himself, was the anticipation of a row. 

And he’d be happy to let his demon stew in that anticipation for the rest of eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points to anyone who caught the literary allusion(s).
> 
> And yes, friends, I realize that “stacks” is more specifically a library term, not a bookstore term, but I grew up around library people, so....


End file.
